A BBC host tried to bully Ken Loach over benefit-related deaths and lived to regret it
Anybody who has read Vox Political for any period of time will know that This Writer agrees with Ken Loach – the evidence showing Iain Duncan Smith’s responsibility for benefit-related deaths has been available for a considerable period of time.
The reason none of those responsible have been brought to book over these deaths is the total support given to them by the mass media, including the BBC – as evidenced in the Ken Loach interview carried out by Joanna Gosling.
The interviewer was clearly keen to deflect any responsibility for benefit-related deaths away from the government that has been pursuing them with gleeful brutality, but Mr Loach was having none of it. He has seen the same evidence as the rest of us and has drawn the only rational conclusion.
Faced with the logic of the situation, Ms Gosling could only resort to the irrational – an ad hominem attack on Mr Loach himself.
Is he an angry man? Silly question. Everybody should be angry about these deaths, which have been entirely unnecessary and were prompted by nothing more than a selfish desire to save money.
Why are we letting these killers get away with it?
The BBC‘s Victoria Derbyshire show featured an interview with the filmmaker on 10 February. And Loach addressed the subject of benefit sanctions, the focus of his latest film I, Daniel Blake. After talking about the film’s content and its accuracy, Joanna Gosling (standing in for Derbyshire) said:
“Iain Duncan Smith has said about it that you focus just on the worst of everything that could happen to one individual and he doesn’t believe it is an accurate reflection of a life somebody might live”
Loach responded:
“There’s hundreds of thousands of people who would say the opposite. Iain Duncan Smith is responsible for destroying the lives of many people. He is responsible for putting a system in place that has led to suicide, that’s led to chaos in people’s lives.”
Loach then detailed the rapid rise in food bank use during Smith’s “reign”, and said “he should hang his head in shame”. Gosling replied:
“How can you say that he, sort of, is responsible for suicides? That is a strong claim to make. What is the evidence for that?”
Loach, of course, makes that claim because the link between suicides and sanctions is certain. By 2015, the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) had carried out 60 peer reviews into deaths of claimants. The DWP only carries out these reviews if it suspects a link between the death and its work. Numerous documented cases and studies have also shown a direct link.
Loach provided Gosling with one specific example:
“I can quote you one example. Michael O’Sullivan lived in Camden, committed suicide, and the coroner said it was… partly due to the pressure from the DWP.”
Obviously blindsided by Loach’s ability to provide evidence that crushed her defence of Smith, Gosling visibly searched her brain for a comeback. Eventually she retorted:
“Are you an angry man?”
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BBC pump out more propaganda by the day people should be given there money back the licence is not worth it
We are watching and waiting for IDS “career end”
Everybody should be angry about what is happening but it’s surprising how many people have their head in the sands and deny what’s going on. Reminds me of how people reacted towards Hitler and his plans. You still have deniers about that now.
Until it bites you or someone you know, its an invisible,problem thanks to the mass media cover up and the Tory soundbites, I know because iot happened to me 5 years ago and my father would not believe the system could be so bad until he witnessed us lose first our life savings, then our cars and finally our house before I finally got the benefits I was entitled to from day one.
We see many examples of bias on the BBC, but, to be fair to Gosling, the questions asked above seem to me to be ones designed to open the door for Loach to elucidate, rather than being inherently hostile.
Hardly a retort. Being angry is the right response to these things.
Agreed. But the implication is that his response is irrational.
The BBC has been in the vanguard of driving the austerity anti disabled anti unemployed anti publicly owned NHS for quite some time, I would love to say it is an anomaly, but it most certainly is not.
BBC bias has been well documented by academic studies for a long time now, we only have to look who was at the head of the BBC since bias has increased to where we are today, Tories at the Top and the bottom, the place is bursting with them, Evan Davies one of the architects of Thatcher’s Poll tax and the BBC were trying to tell us then that the poll tax was a fair tax.
I believe in public broadcasting, but political bias has to be rooted out of the BBC from top to bottom.
That will not happen so long as this government is in office.
Not very bright BBC interviewers who smuggly pump questions from their behind
the scenes researchers churning the same old puke….however have no plan B when their researchers work gets rightly rubbished for some of the biased poo that is really is.
If anyone thinks they can get the better of Ken Loach, they are sorely mistaken, he is a well informed, intelligent man that the BBC tried to humiliate for their tory overlords, they failed miserably, everyone likes and respects Ken Loach, no one likes and respects the tories and the BBC!